The Scottish International Storytelling Festival 2023 – on now

The Scottish International Storytelling Festival runs until 29 October with a programme chock full of events in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland.

This is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the festival has a Go Local programme of events bringing parks and village halls to life with the theme “Right To Be Human”.

If you cannot make it along to the Festival there is a weekly podcast in six episodes. Another Story is also focused on the festival theme and on the online workshop Global Lab.

Scottish International Storytelling Festival Director, Donald Smith said: “All over the world human and environmental rights are under threat. But against that there is an activist and creative tide building towards a different future. The Storytelling Festival is part of that wave.”

Tickets to each event in this year’s programme cost a maximum of £10, with family events costing just £5 per ticket. For those planning on attending multiple events, the Festival Pass (£20/£10)  offers discounted tickets to many live festival events, online and at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, as well as a discount at the Scottish Storytelling Centre’s bookshop and Haggis Box Café.

Full programme is available here and below or visit sisf.org.uk for more details.

ON SUNDAY 15 October

At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Arboretum Place, EH3 5NZ

Booking and info: Scottish Storytelling Centre – www.sisf.org.uk, 0131 556 9579

Once There Was a Bug

Live | Outdoor

12pm-1.30pm & 2.30pm-4pm (20min sessions)
Free, drop-in | All Ages
Stories about trees, animals, bugs and much more, for children and their grown-ups.

Rewilding Cinderella:
An Eco-Storytelling Concert

Live | Outdoor

1.30pm(1hr15)|£5 •Storywalk1-AllAges •Storywalk2-12+ Follow the Storytelling Choir across the Garden as Cinderella stories from all over the world are woven together to explore the global, local and intimate journey of the ash-child. With Gauri Raje, Kestrel Morton, Laura Sampson, Wendy Shearer, Joanna Gilar and Fleur Hemmings. Poetry from Tunde Balogun, music from Heulwen Williams and artistic enchantments by Hannah Battershell. (The event involves a limited use of hazelnut and walnut shells.)